


fear of a blank planet

by thirteenghosts (newsbypostcard)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1981, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/thirteenghosts
Summary: In respects this is the most shameful thing: that Remus went looking for an explanation, even after Dumbledore and countless others he encountered told him he'd already gone to Azkaban. Still he looked for him. Still he wanted that confrontation. He wanted to know how and why this happened -- how Peter could be dead; how James and Lily could be dead.How Voldemort knew where to look.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A friend was looking for remus/sirius recs today and I had a handful, but then wondered if I could rec any of my old stuff from back in the day so looked up my old ff.net profile. I wrote this in 2009, and I think it is probably the only salvageable thing I wrote out of the ~250k I wrote between 2004 and 2010. I borrowed from another one of my other old fics and did a quick edit and clean-up, but apart from one 150 word flashback none of this is new material. 
> 
> I'm intentionally preserving it because it's the first instance that my modern voice really shone through. I stand by this piece, but I'm not sure it does any work. You know what I mean? It's devastation station and that's about it. There's no hope out of the ashes, which is my usual jam. But it is identifiable. This is my origin story, in respects. I'd been writing fic for five years by this point, but this is the transition point between the writer I'd been and the writer I'd become. (It is clearer and more concise than what I manage now, actually, so in respects it might even be stronger.)
> 
> Title is a Porcupine Tree album. This piece used to be songfic. It's okay. 2009 was a while ago.

  


Remus went looking for him.

In respects this is the most shameful thing: that he went looking for an explanation, even after Dumbledore and countless others he encountered told him he'd already gone to Azkaban. Still he looked for him. Still he wanted that confrontation. He wanted to know how and why this happened -- how Peter could be dead; how James and Lily could be dead.

How Voldemort knew where to look.

Remus went looking for him. Remus looked for him for nearly twenty-four hours before something in the haze of shock became worn and left the pull of exhaustion as the only force left to penetrate his unfeeling shell. He stumbled back to headquarters and felt some strange sensation of relief to find no one there. There were countless glasses in the kitchen, lining the counters, all of them with the remnants of booze tracing the bottoms of the glasses in the sort of crescent moons that usually left Remus with an abiding relief.

A toast. For the Potters. For Peter.

Remus had missed it. He would not miss it now. He conjured himself a brandy and sat heavily down at the kitchen table, sticky with firewhisky.

He stared at the wall as he toasted nothing and no one, left alone in this place he's called home since he and Sirius had called it quits.

 _"--cannot expect me to stand idly by and_ watch _as you--"_

_"As I what, Sirius? Perform my duties? Follow the orders I've been given?"_

_"Associate with the enemy!"_

_"Let's not pretend that_ spying _is remotely the same as_ associating _\--"_

_"Frankly, Remus, I'm struggling to see the difference from here!"_

_A staggered silence. "Are you?"_

_Sirius' teeth ground, brought to force by honesty. "Yes," he breathed, quiet._

_There had been something not right about it. Remus had always been one to trust reason over instinct, but for once in his life he opted the other way._

Two months since then and Sirius had gone to James and Lily and made his concerns known. He'd told them his suspicions about Remus and he hadn't been there but he'd known, and they'd made him secret-keeper and now--

\--and now--

A deafening shatter broke Remus out of his reverie. He looked up to see he'd thrown the glass in his hand against the opposite wall without thinking, without realizing.

He stared at the shattered shards of glass. He blinked at them. Time passed.

_\--Sirius crowding him against that wall, smiling into his lips, kissing him, hands in his hair and pressing at his hip--_

Remus forced himself out of the chair and took out his wand. It shook. 

"Reparo," he said.

His wand was pointed at the broken glass, but nothing happened.

"Reparo!"

The wand twitched feebly. The glass remained broken.

Remus stared at it for a moment as though tempting it nonverbally to clean itself up, then shrugged. He stumbled over to the closet, grabbed a broom and dustpan, and swept up the mess himself. The glass made a beautiful tinkling sound -- a song that didn't belong in the moment. Remus begrudged it but kept sweeping, as though he deserved the wrongness of the sound.

He was standing now and he didn't feel like sitting anymore. His friends were gone and his lover was responsible. He picked up a few glasses from the table and trudged toward the sink. He thought he would do some dishes. That always did relax him.

_"You've got a wand, Moony."_

_"Thank you, Sirius, I am aware." Remus had kept scrubbing at the saucepan, sleeves rolled by his elbow. "I like to wash them by hand. It gives me a chance to think."_

_"You're always thinking."_

_"Yes, but it's different with dishes."_

_"Barking."_

_"No, I'm howling. You're barking."_

_Sirius' grin had been broad. "Clever Moony." He'd thrown the magazine aside and gotten up from the chair with the sort of grace Remus could never muster. Remus had found he couldn't keep his eyes off Sirius as he'd sauntered over -- snaked a hand around Remus' waist, maneuvered him until Sirius had been standing between Remus and the sink, his hips pressing into Remus', leaving Remus leaning back and rolling his eyes. "I still think you could be doing something more productive with your time."_

_"Is that so."_

_"It is." Sirius leaned forward and kissed Remus' nose. "Thinking's never gotten you very far, has it?"_

_Remus had hummed. "It got me here."_

_"Well then, I guess it isn't all bad." Then Sirius' lips had been on Remus', soft and full and –_

Remus' lip was curling. The four glasses he had been holding lay shattered at his feet. He had thrown them down. He had not done it on purpose but it was now done. He stared at the glass only for a moment before reaching beside him and grabbing two more glasses. He threw them at the floor on instinct alone. They shattered, too.

Something in Remus broke, like the cry in his lungs. He tore through the kitchen, grabbing every glass on every surface, throwing them across the room down to the floor, into the corridor, everywhere he could possibly get them, and they shattered, each and every one. As he smashed he felt his heart shatter too, and he screamed at the rubble as though it should be responsible. He screamed at it again and he upturned the table and when he came to himself he was standing in the middle of a field of diamonds, chest heaving, feet bleeding, sobs racking his shoulders, his lover has killed his best friends and he'd _known_ it was coming, he could have _done something_ , but he had been too fucking blind with love to stop it and now he was here, alone, torn to shards, and there was no one left even to witness him bleeding among the shining ruins of cowardice.

  


* * *

  


"You should be out celebrating, you know," Arthur told him softly an hour or two or a lifetime later as he magically swept up the glass and crouched by Remus' side. Remus was seated in an armchair in the sitting room, feet wrapped in toilet paper because he couldn't be bothered with doing anything more, the last unbroken glass having become a bottomless pit of brandy poured from an actual bottle. "He's gone. The terror is finished."

"The terror is finished?" he asked Arthur thickly. "I'm bloody happy for you and yours, Arthur, if you can celebrate this. In case you haven't noticed, I've lost everything I had." He looked over and saw the picture of the four of them, Remus and James and Peter and Sirius, on the wall near the door of the sitting room. His eyes managed to focus on Sirius with much difficulty. He was young and laughing and beautiful and Remus ached with renewed longing. He kicked the table in front of him and revelled in the pain that shot through his foot. He looked into his glass and forgot Arthur was there. "I've lost everything I ever loved."

  


* * *

  


Remus had staggered up well after dark and tried to grab the picture off the wall. He pulled and tugged and wept and pounded the wall but it would not give. It took him until the sun started to peek through the windows and Sirius' dark eyes began to penetrate his own to realize that someone – probably Sirius – had put a permanent sticking charm on it.

He wondered dimly if Sirius did it before he sold the Potters out, expressly for the purpose of torturing him.

Then he took out his wand and blew out the wall.

  


* * *

  


Sleep found him, fitful. Sirius floated in his head. He seemed to dream in memories -- only in some of them Sirius was clearly evil, clearly plotting to kill him and all of them, and Remus tried to stop him but he killed them all anyway. In all of them, he turned to kill Remus, but somehow couldn't. Something in the way Remus looked at him made Sirius stop, hand outstretched, Avada Kedavra on his lips, and let himself be dragged off by Dumbledore and Arthur to Azkaban.

Other dreams were perfect memories. They were perfect. They were lying in bed on a Sunday morning, Sirius having come back from a mission the night before and Remus having come back from another stint with the wolves. They'd survived the debriefing meeting and then dissolved into a tangle of limbs and lips as soon as they could politely excuse themselves. Then they'd fallen asleep in each other's arms, Sirius' nose pressed against his skin, as cold as it ever was.

In one memory or dream, Sirius' hair was matted to his face. Sweat that hadn't had a chance to dry between the fight and being fucked still glistened on his brow and Remus ran a thumb across his temple, reveling in the way Sirius looked when he slept. One arm splayed over the pillows, his head resting upon it, his other arm still hanging lazily over Remus' hip. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed. The way the sunlight crept through the window meant that the feather of his hair glowed in the morning. 

Remus reached out and ran the back of his index finger along Sirius' hairline, his cheek, his jaw, his lips. Then Remus kissed him and Sirius kissed him back, not quite awake, but the arm glided over his hip and into the small of his back to bring him closer.

He was perfect. They were perfect. They were –

Remus opened his eyes and stared out at the room over his knees, heart pounding in his chest. It was not yet morning and he wondered why Sirius had lied about everything. He wondered why Sirius had made him believe he loved him, why Sirius had pretended to love all of them, even as he plotted their demise. He wondered why Sirius hadn't killed him too. Maybe he knew this would be worse.

He wondered how long he had been working for Voldemort. Whether he was interrogating him about same to see if they were on the same side.

_"Sometimes I'm truly afraid for the world," Lily'd told him, just weeks before she'd died. "I fear that someday it'll all become too much for anyone to comprehend, and people will stop fighting. They'll just stop and let evil take over." She'd shaken her head sadly, strands of red hair coming loose from her pony tail. "Sometimes, I really am afraid. But then I surround myself with you and James and everyone else, and I realize that will never happen. You know the saying, after all…"_

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is--

Remus stayed immobile, afraid -- asking all the same questions. He wondered if Sirius had merely -- stopped fighting. If all of this was too much to comprehend.

There was no one left to offer him an answer.

  



End file.
